Bonding dinner

Friday evening, our colleagues planned to have a dinner for those assigned to work in Philippines for the next 3 weeks.

In the morning, attended a course on SuSE Linux at a training centre with our company shareholder. The class talk about the functionalities and benefits of SuSE Linux. The presenter mentioned that SuSE is the only Linux platform recognized by Microsoft as they had a collaboration for open source development. So assuming your business need to run Linux servers in Windows environment, Microsoft can provide the SuSE Linux expertise and the support. However if you are using other platform of Linux OSes, Microsoft would not provide any support.

The class taught us how to install the SuSE Linux OS and creating user accounts. Training ended at 1230, so headed back to office. Back at office, the female engineer had gone back Malaysia and another engineer had diarrhea so could not have dinner with us. After work we headed to Geylang for steamboat, as recommended by my china colleague. 6 engineers including me and 2 ladies , the wife of my team lead and girlfriend of the china colleague came.

The restaurant is located beside the famous Beef Hor Fun. They have only 2 soup bases, herbal and Ma La spicy base. This is my first time trying Ma La, and its too much for me. The meat is ala carte style where you need to place order and delivered on a trolley. Wherelse vegetables, cold dishes were free for all to take. I spent most of my time eating vegetables as the meat portion is limited as you need to place orders.

Meat
Beef
Pork
Fish
pig kidneys
crabs
prawns
Beef intestines.

Its a inter-national dinner as we have Chineses, Malaysians, Indians, Burmese and me as only Singaporean. Its the first for my Indian colleague to try prawns and crabs, and he loved crabs alot. During the dinner, my Indian colleague was telling me interesting and life-threatening stories when he was younger. The billed was $24/pax w/o drinks, GST and service charge. I think its alittle too expensive for small variety and no free flow drinks.

Saturday morning had classes on Financial Planning. The lecturer is a Doctorate with years of experience in the Insurance Industry. He brought his audience to understand the importance of financial literacy, sharing real-case scenarios and jokes.I feel they should teach financial literacy in Secondary school, so the students are able to plan their finances. How much to save for overseas degree programme, start a business ...